Critics of Naheed Nenshi used to ask me a simplistic and dismissive question: What has Calgary’s mayor accomplished, besides food trucks?

Last time I heard that was sometime before he made his first appearance — before dawn on June 21, 2013 — at the city’s emergency briefing room.

Nenshi would emerge again and again in his first sleepless 43 hours and throughout that fraught week, projecting calm, confidence, optimism and a few leavening witticisms to a city on the edge.

He was a political rock star before the flood. During and after, he gained hero status. Sometimes literally — one Calgarian taped Nenshi’s face onto a Superman “Man of Steel” bus shelter ad, an image that quickly bounced around social media.

“You could compare what he said and the way he acted to what happened in 9/11 with Giuliani,” said Sunnyside resident and flood victim James Pass, referring to New York’s 2001 mayor, Rudolph Giuliani.

“The reassurance ... and just giving us a little bit of hope.”

Like the 9/11 mayor, Nenshi has constantly in speeches returned to the traumatic flood and the city’s (mostly) impressive response. He’s used his arsenal of anecdotes so often — the flooded-out family enjoying shepherd’s pie, the thousand volunteer-made quilts, the Bowness sign “We lost some stuff, but we gained a community” — that he apologized before telling one at a flood group’s meeting last week. “You’ve heard them all, and they may feel a little bit trite,” he cautioned.

But there was a tender quiet in the room when Nenshi told of “Sam’s mom” in Rideau Park and her gratitude for that shepherd’s pie.

The mayor’s strength wasn’t in snapping his fingers and doing something, Coun. Gian-Carlo Carra said. “He reflects the city we live in, and the amazing sleepless leadership he provided was a reflection of the amazing citizenry who stepped into the muddy basements and helped Calgarians dig out,” Carra said.

Nenshi didn’t have to goad citizens to volunteer; just to suggest where to gather. When overwhelming thousands showed up at McMahon Stadium parking lot June 24, he simply had to grab a megaphone and thank them. “This is our city! This is the spirit of our city!” he yelled.

Part of the reason Nenshi and his council colleagues could perform so ably as communicators and on-the-street sympathizers was due to the crisis management of the city staff behind him, and the boundless support flowing from the federal and provincial governments. Many of the hard decisions were made without him, under the state of local emergency.

He had little reason to feel overwhelmed or hand control to a higher power, as High River part-time mayor Emile Blokland did, or get into frantic shouting matches for help from other politicians, as New Orleans’ Ray Nagin did during Hurricane Katrina. There was heroic and speedy all-hands-on-deck progress being made by the City of Calgary’s employees, and Nenshi was afforded the opportunity to reflect that, as well.

As time passes and the anecdotes do run the risk of sounding trite, some harder work looms for Nenshi. Tough decision are ahead, on major mitigation projects and on how the city finances what other governments might not cover.

There was silence during the mayor’s flood-time stories last week, and applause during the introduction. But there were murmurs and shifting in seats when he said engineered dams and flood tunnels can’t solve everything, and that last June was a “wake-up call to start thinking about a new normal.”

His performance on the next stage of post-flood Calgary may depend as much on his decision-making skills as his communication ability.

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